Ronny was righteous until he dropped acid.  He felt wrong holding it in the first place
We thought it was harmless until he was fixated on a tree on Summit Avenue for thirty minutes because he said it melted like a prayer candle in Sunday school.  Our moms told us that weed is a gateway drug and beer is gateway liquor, but at this point the gateway was off the hinges and everything is welcomed.  All could come in, but Ronny couldn’t get out, and no one could help him, so we all went with him.
  Ronny wore a black shirt, black pants, and white Converses.  Maybe he felt like a small portion of him could be saved and that was his way expressing it.  He always wore black.  In his room, he threw on his tight black skinny jeans, his tight black t-shirt, and a black hoodie on and said, ‘my outfit matches my soul’; I laughed, he’s a cliché of teenage angst sometimes.  But, his white sneakers were like the North Star in the night sky in a place far away from the city.  A place that doesn’t have sky scrapers tear into the security blanket that shelters us from the beyond.
    We all met up in a pilgrimage attempt to the Starlight Motel at the lowest point of Jersey City; Ronny wanted to find nirvana, salvation.  Something our moms wanted us to do as we walked to Bible Study class on Sunday’s right before mass where we would confess our sins and read about Noah’s Ark.  Ronny found no salvation there.  None of us did.  After a while we figured things like nirvana and salvation didn’t exist.  But, Ronny promised us that it’s out there.  He showed us, and that is something Sister Mary Lou couldn’t do though hours of Our Fathers, and rulers cracking against our knuckles when we would get caught doing violent horizontal jerk-off motions after we said “amen”.
  Sister Mary Lou told Ronny that he would never be saved after he got caught spray painting, ‘God’s never there’ in red on the church’s ancient wooden doors.  Ronny would have gotten away with it if he didn’t spray the excess paint into a brown paper bag to breathe it in and get stoned; he fell asleep and was caught red handed.  People went there to pray to feel nirvana, but Ronny went there to spray paint and get high.  He wasn’t welcomed into the kingdom of Bible Study anymore.  And, Sister Mary Lou promised him that he wasn’t going to be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven on judgment day.  Ronny couldn’t care less.
Cars accelerated past us without even realizing we were on the shoulder waiting to cross as the drivers drowsily made their way to work; for a second we felt one with strangers.  The wind of the passing cars conjured cyclones that steamroll into Ronny and that’s probably the first gentle thing he’s felt in a long time.  I remembered when Ronny’s dad dropped him off at school the day after he got kicked out of Bible Study.  His ribs were all cracked up from the beating he got for tainting the Catholic family reputation they once had in the eyes of the congregation.  If only they knew about what Ronny’s father did after a few bottles of wine.  Ronny looked like Jesus on the marble statue outside of our high school; miserable, beaten, pale.  We went to the bathroom after homeroom to talk, but he had nothing to say.  He just put his hand under the air-dryer and felt the warm delicate air touch his fragile hands.  He looked tranquil.
  Our high way was separated by a three lane highway and at five am we realized why it’s called the Starlight Motel.  A reflection of the black sky with white stars light-years away is mirrored on the highway with cars and headlights.  He was willing to become angel dust to obtain the angel dust on the other side of the highway; we were all so stoned.  But, he wanted more.  His urgency scared us.
Ronny was lured and captured.  I remember watching Blue Planet.  A special on the Angler Fish, also known as the Devil Fish was on.  The Devil Fish hunts in the deep sea using a bioluminescent light that comes from its spine to lure its prey in.  Light does not exist one mile under the sea, so prey is drawn to its own funeral.  Ronny succumbed to the lure.
  The rubber on the tip of a Converse is what separated Ronny and the grill of a Toyota Avalon.  I looked at him and remembered when we went to a Bayside concert in Poughkeepsie.  Ronny went into a mosh pit and threw elbows against people as they pushed him in the middle of a group of men that live to drive an elbow in a junkie’s face to The Ghost of St. Valentine.  That was the first time I’ve seen Ronny alive.  He walked out of the pit with a fractured nose, a swollen eye, a bruised head, and a smile.  One thought entered my mind: “will Ronny be smiling after another metal mosh pit?”
  Ronny took the fraction of a step he needed.  The side window of a fire truck speeding by shattered against the top of his head.  Everyone heard a crushing sound, but no one knew if it was the window of Ronny’s face that made it.  He wasn’t smiling.  Blood hit his white Converses as a reminder that even the little bit of hope he had will always be contaminated and stained.  His black clothes are already black like his soul.  The white Converses had hope.  They were untainted.  But, the lure ruined those too.
It took him to be broken for the lure to be broken.  Two firemen jumped out of the truck and everyone ran, except me and Ronny.  He was put on a stretcher and I was asked if I wanted to come with him when the ambulance arrived; I said no.
The firemen got back on the truck to follow the ambulance and the bumper sticker read: Ladder 09 Truck 20 Hell on Wheels.  Hell followed him on his way out and it seems appropriate.  We didn’t see Ronny for a long time after that.

 I regret that I didn’t go with him; I still don’t really know why either.  I used to have nightmares about him waking up in the hospital alone and going into the bathroom to feel the gentle wind coming out of the hand-dryer warm his cold skin; I wouldn’t be there to pat him on the back, which is translated to, ‘I’m here for you, friend’.  Deep down, I know that after he woke up we would have been on another pilgrimage.  At least he would have been happy.

But, his nirvana is hell and I’m somewhere stuck in the middle.